Week 3 Voortrekker Monument, school visit, and MALL!!

In my village there are three schools, Primary, Middle and Secondary. The 20 of us will attend Peace Corps training sessions at the Middle School. For activities such as following a learner, shadowing an instructor and leading a lesson, the 20 of us will split into smaller clusters and be divided evenly into each of the 3 schools.

Here is the morning assembly, this takes place daily. After song the principal and vice principal give announcements.






Aside from sessions on classroom management, which proved useful for some, I spent my time familiarizing myself with the schools time table “the daily schedule”. The majority of these training sessions were conducted by current PCV’s. I like this approach to training because not only were we receiving useful information, the PCV’s were a very good resource in regards to life in a South African village, school and traveling in SA.


Next week I will lead a lesson. So this week I spent about 1hr working with the science instructor, who’s class I will lead for a period. He gave me all the necessary resources to prepare. I cant wait to get some good practice in.
The reasoning for us entering the schools during training is exposure to the schools and, how the learners interact with their instructors, how lessons are planned and executed…ect This was something I deemed necessary and I took as many notes as possible.


We were first instructed to follow a learner for 2 periods. This consisted of the principal hand picking a learner for each of us. My learners name
"Sensation". I greeted her in my target language and then shrugged my shoulders saying, “That’s all I have right now”. She smiled and replied, “My science class is this way”. I was happy that her English was good.

Sensation and her friend




MORE LEARNERS!!




Hmm…. The observation was, for lack of a better word, different. The lesson consisted of the instructor copying his lesson plan from the book to the board. This lesson looked like it had been used for the past 4 years. The instructor was unable to answer any questions. When the instructor asked the class a question all the learners would reply with, “YES”. After about 3 times I realized that the students were programmed to say yes regardless of what came out the instructors mouth.

On Saturday the 52 of us jumped on a bus and headed for Pretoria, “The Capital” to visit the Voortrekker Monument. Situated on a nature reserve this monument commemorates the pioneer history of SA and the history of the Afrikaner.
Here are a few pictures of the monument.












Video!!





We then went to the mall. I went CRAZY!! I ate PIZZA, and McDonalds! I also bought spaghetti that I will make for my family. Imagine 52 American rushing the mall. I was so stressed because we only had 2 hours.